Over the past 50 years, electronic equipment has become more and more prevalent in the average person's everyday life. With the invention of the transistor, electronics have rapidly become more and more powerful and sophisticated. At the same time, advances in technology have allowed electronics to penetrate nearly every aspect of our everyday lives. The home is no exception.
Increasingly, electronic equipment has allowed us to communicate with one another, or to receive other types of media services such as television, telephone service, internet, and satellite service. To provide these services, media providers often run cables of varying types from remote locations to individual homes. The cables, of varying types, allow individuals to receive telephone, internet, and cable service.
Each individual home or unit has an interface, referred to as a Network Interface Device (NID), located outside that allows a home's internal wiring to communicate with the cables from the media providers. The interface typically includes electronic equipment and circuitry. The nature of electrical circuitry requires that it be protected from the outside environment in order to function properly. As such, different enclosures have been devised in order to protect this equipment from the elements, such as wind, water, dust, and heat.
Overheating of equipment due to solar radiation, and heat generated by the electrical equipment itself, is the source of significant problems. Electrical equipment that overheats can malfunction, which results in costly repairs. To avoid overheating, enclosures employ a wide variety of techniques in an attempt to maintain an ambient temperature within an enclosure. This problem is not as prevalent with indoor electrical enclosures, which are currently more widespread, because these enclosures do not need to be sealed and are not exposed to solar radiation.
Although the outdoor Network Interface Device (NID), the housing for the demarcation point, is a mature technology, the inclusion of heat-dissipating and environmentally sensitive electronics and opto-electronics in particular in outdoor NID-like applications is a relatively new application. Previous outdoor applications have addressed the cooling problem by packaging the electronics in an enclosure that is larger in surface area, and hence less desirable by the customer, than is otherwise necessary for the physical packaging of the electronics and associated hardware. Prior art enclosures have also been designed to limit air intake to the bottom surface of an enclosure, and air exhaust to the top of the enclosure.
A drawback of more compact enclosures currently available is that they result in operating conditions for the electronic devices that are hotter than desirable under worst case environmental conditions and will reduce the life and reliability of the system below desirable levels. Higher power applications typically employ expensive and power-hungry cooling fans.
A continuing need exists for a low cost electrical enclosure that is capable of efficiently cooling electronic equipment. Moreover, a continuing need also exists for an electrical enclosure that can shield sensitive electronic equipment from solar radiation.